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Should Trees Have Standing?: Law, Morality, and the Environment
Originally published in 1972, Should Trees Have Standing? was a rallying point for the then burgeoning environmental movement, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, in the 35th anniversary edition of this remarkably influential book, Christopher D. Stone updates his original thesis and explores the impact his ideas have had on the courts, the academy, and society as a whole. At the heart of the book is an eminently sensible, legally sound, and compelling argument that the environment should be granted legal rights. For the new edition, Stone explores a variety of recent cases and current events--and related topics such as climate change and protecting the oceans--providing a thoughtful survey of the past and an insightful glimpse at the future of the environmental movement. This enduring work continues to serve as the definitive statement as to why trees, oceans, animals, and the environment as a whole should be bestowed with legal rights, so that the voiceless elements in nature are protected for future generations.
261 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1974
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July 9, 2022
First, it's worth noting that the core essay (and idea) in this collection is freely available online. The central argument is that treating natural entities like trees (or rivers, species, ecosystems, etc.) as something like people in law is both feasible and beneficial to the strictly-defined people who invent and abide such laws. Stone isn't exactly the most accessible writer, but if you think a court case like "Lake Tahoe v. the State of California" sounds absurd, this essay (and the rest of this book) might help you understand that laws are themselves absurd (or at least arbitrary), and that we get to decide whether a lake can sue a state.
I was in need of such disillusionment before encountering the idea in Astra Taylor's excellent Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone. The main counterargument is that there are all kinds of entities granted rights in law that are not rational, self-aware, or even embodied, including the mentally disabled, the unborn, and corporations, so it is no more absurd that a mountain might sue someone than a corporation.
One problem I have with a lot of this thinking is an absurdity in law that I still cannot quite accept: that monetary valuation is a reasonable proxy for actual value, e.g. that the court might award a plaintiff damages for pain and suffering, as if pain and suffering have a price. How can you put a price on pollution that drives a species to extinction? Species are not interchangeable, or re-creatable, at least not practically so. Even in a science fictional world of species resurrection that might make them so, ecological damages are not: you can't pay to make an old growth forest. That takes hundreds if not thousands of years. Non-human rights make sense if they can be used to prevent damages or stop them, but after the damage is done I don't think I'm fully sold.
There's also an unrealized gem in that first essay that, unlike some of the other ideas, hasn't gained much traction since: "I am suggesting that there is nothing unthinkable about [...] an electoral apportionment that made some systematic effort to allow for the representative 'rights' of nonhuman life" (p. 21). That was preceded by disavowals of what he was *not* suggesting, like apportioning representatives by forest acreage, but... what was he suggesting? A separate "wilderness congress" apportioned by... number of species? Carbon captured? And with what powers? Kim Stanley Robinson ran with Stone's notion of a "guardian for future generations" in The Ministry for the Future. Maybe we can expect tricamerality, The Third Chamber, Speaker for the Wild, Bear Senator...
Notes
p. 8 Courts can appoint a conservator *for a corporation* when the corporation becomes "incompetent." What does that even mean?!
p. 24 In discussing the kind of weak utilitarian arguments environmentalists sometimes make about the recreational value of nonhumans to humans (e.g. "The river has value because I enjoy looking at it"), Stone suggests, "I expect they want to say something less egotistic and more emphatic but the prevailing and sanctioned modes of explanation in our society are not quite ready for it. In this vein, there must have been abolitionists who put their case in terms of getting more work out of Blacks." Were there? Weirdly, there *is* an expansive economic literature on the efficiency of slavery, including, in true academic fashion, a study of people studying the efficiency of slavery. Stone's point was that we have the moral framework today to argue that every living human has unquestionable moral worth without resorting to crass arguments about whether someone would be more productive as a slave or not, just not the framework to say nonhumans have similarly unquestionable worth... so why do economist still argue about the efficiency of slavery?
[I have more notes, but a year later I still haven't worked on them, so here we are]
I was in need of such disillusionment before encountering the idea in Astra Taylor's excellent Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone. The main counterargument is that there are all kinds of entities granted rights in law that are not rational, self-aware, or even embodied, including the mentally disabled, the unborn, and corporations, so it is no more absurd that a mountain might sue someone than a corporation.
One problem I have with a lot of this thinking is an absurdity in law that I still cannot quite accept: that monetary valuation is a reasonable proxy for actual value, e.g. that the court might award a plaintiff damages for pain and suffering, as if pain and suffering have a price. How can you put a price on pollution that drives a species to extinction? Species are not interchangeable, or re-creatable, at least not practically so. Even in a science fictional world of species resurrection that might make them so, ecological damages are not: you can't pay to make an old growth forest. That takes hundreds if not thousands of years. Non-human rights make sense if they can be used to prevent damages or stop them, but after the damage is done I don't think I'm fully sold.
There's also an unrealized gem in that first essay that, unlike some of the other ideas, hasn't gained much traction since: "I am suggesting that there is nothing unthinkable about [...] an electoral apportionment that made some systematic effort to allow for the representative 'rights' of nonhuman life" (p. 21). That was preceded by disavowals of what he was *not* suggesting, like apportioning representatives by forest acreage, but... what was he suggesting? A separate "wilderness congress" apportioned by... number of species? Carbon captured? And with what powers? Kim Stanley Robinson ran with Stone's notion of a "guardian for future generations" in The Ministry for the Future. Maybe we can expect tricamerality, The Third Chamber, Speaker for the Wild, Bear Senator...
Notes
p. 8 Courts can appoint a conservator *for a corporation* when the corporation becomes "incompetent." What does that even mean?!
p. 24 In discussing the kind of weak utilitarian arguments environmentalists sometimes make about the recreational value of nonhumans to humans (e.g. "The river has value because I enjoy looking at it"), Stone suggests, "I expect they want to say something less egotistic and more emphatic but the prevailing and sanctioned modes of explanation in our society are not quite ready for it. In this vein, there must have been abolitionists who put their case in terms of getting more work out of Blacks." Were there? Weirdly, there *is* an expansive economic literature on the efficiency of slavery, including, in true academic fashion, a study of people studying the efficiency of slavery. Stone's point was that we have the moral framework today to argue that every living human has unquestionable moral worth without resorting to crass arguments about whether someone would be more productive as a slave or not, just not the framework to say nonhumans have similarly unquestionable worth... so why do economist still argue about the efficiency of slavery?
[I have more notes, but a year later I still haven't worked on them, so here we are]
April 8, 2020
Inspiring essays for creating a sustainable path to a future in harmony with Nature.
March 11, 2024
Super interessant, verschrikkelijk ingewikkeld.
September 27, 2023
I'm going to be real with you I didn't read it I just had to do a paper on it and I'm taking advantage of this.
January 30, 2020
Christopher Stone membongkar satu batasan radikal mengenai bagaimana relasi human dan non-human being. Relasi antara anthroposen sebagai subjek dan non-human sebagai objek.
Dalam tulisannya, ia menggugat bagaimana seharusnya pohon (dan non-human being secara luas) melampaui dirinya sendiri sebagai objek, untuk diakui sebagai subjek melalui instrumen hukum.
Institusionalisasi pohon kedalam subjek hukum ini, bukan dilakukan untuk sekadar mengubah argumen dominasi manusia pada pohon, namun lebih jauh ia pohon (dan non-human being) harus mampu melampaui argumentasi bagaimana pohon mampu berdiri sendiri dalam statusnya sebagai subjek, tanpa tergantung pada atribusi manusia. Ia harus melampaui logika utilitarian yang melihat pohon dalam kerangka matematis untung dan rugi, toward the economical logics.
Tulisan ini pada jamannya merubah total pemikiran hukum yang kaku mengenai hak. Evolusi hak kalau kita lihat secara materialisme historis hanya berlaku pada manusia, mulai dari para raja, bangsawan lalu kemudian laki-laki. Baru kali ini saja pengakuan hukum atas hak mengalami perubahan radikal dengan diakuinya orang kulit hitam dan perempuan, setelah berabad-abad lamanya tersubordinasi dan di diskriminasi sebagai budak. Manusia kelas dua. Dari awal kita bisa melihat hukum memang seksis. Adapun sebelum pengakuan hak atas dua entitas terakhir itu secara bersamaan juga diakui pula evolusi hak pada non-living thing yaitu entitas imajiner negara dan korporasi. Pengakuan ini pun hanya didasarkan pada keuntungan manusia untuk mengakui hak dari kedua entitas imajiner tadi.
Bersama dengan Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson dan kawan-kawan yang sudah terlebih dahulu men-dekonstruksi paradigma antroposentris melalui disiplin ilmunya masing-masing, seperti biasa hukum yg selalu mengekor dan tidak punya daya dobrak otentik baru akhir-akhir ikut menggugat paradigma antoposentrisme ini.
Masih banyak diskursus mengenai konsekuensi pemberian status sebagai subjek hukum ini sendiri, yang masih terbuka untuk diperdebatkan. Ketika pohon dan non-human being ini diberikan status hukum sebagai subjek, alias sama dengan manusia otomatis ia secara koheren juga memiliki hak dan kewajiban. Bagaimana kita bisa mendefinisikan hak dan kewajiban dari pohon (dan non-human being) itu sendiri?
Pada akhirnya buku ini bukan sekadar tulisan yang hanya dibaca untuk mengisi waktu senggang, tetapi memberikan semacam refleksi dan ruang intrapersonal yang lebih dalam untuk ikut berfikir tentang bagaimana kita mampu berkontribusi dalam menyelamatkan bumi kita.
Dalam tulisannya, ia menggugat bagaimana seharusnya pohon (dan non-human being secara luas) melampaui dirinya sendiri sebagai objek, untuk diakui sebagai subjek melalui instrumen hukum.
Institusionalisasi pohon kedalam subjek hukum ini, bukan dilakukan untuk sekadar mengubah argumen dominasi manusia pada pohon, namun lebih jauh ia pohon (dan non-human being) harus mampu melampaui argumentasi bagaimana pohon mampu berdiri sendiri dalam statusnya sebagai subjek, tanpa tergantung pada atribusi manusia. Ia harus melampaui logika utilitarian yang melihat pohon dalam kerangka matematis untung dan rugi, toward the economical logics.
Tulisan ini pada jamannya merubah total pemikiran hukum yang kaku mengenai hak. Evolusi hak kalau kita lihat secara materialisme historis hanya berlaku pada manusia, mulai dari para raja, bangsawan lalu kemudian laki-laki. Baru kali ini saja pengakuan hukum atas hak mengalami perubahan radikal dengan diakuinya orang kulit hitam dan perempuan, setelah berabad-abad lamanya tersubordinasi dan di diskriminasi sebagai budak. Manusia kelas dua. Dari awal kita bisa melihat hukum memang seksis. Adapun sebelum pengakuan hak atas dua entitas terakhir itu secara bersamaan juga diakui pula evolusi hak pada non-living thing yaitu entitas imajiner negara dan korporasi. Pengakuan ini pun hanya didasarkan pada keuntungan manusia untuk mengakui hak dari kedua entitas imajiner tadi.
Bersama dengan Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson dan kawan-kawan yang sudah terlebih dahulu men-dekonstruksi paradigma antroposentris melalui disiplin ilmunya masing-masing, seperti biasa hukum yg selalu mengekor dan tidak punya daya dobrak otentik baru akhir-akhir ikut menggugat paradigma antoposentrisme ini.
Masih banyak diskursus mengenai konsekuensi pemberian status sebagai subjek hukum ini sendiri, yang masih terbuka untuk diperdebatkan. Ketika pohon dan non-human being ini diberikan status hukum sebagai subjek, alias sama dengan manusia otomatis ia secara koheren juga memiliki hak dan kewajiban. Bagaimana kita bisa mendefinisikan hak dan kewajiban dari pohon (dan non-human being) itu sendiri?
Pada akhirnya buku ini bukan sekadar tulisan yang hanya dibaca untuk mengisi waktu senggang, tetapi memberikan semacam refleksi dan ruang intrapersonal yang lebih dalam untuk ikut berfikir tentang bagaimana kita mampu berkontribusi dalam menyelamatkan bumi kita.
October 7, 2023
Should Trees Have Standing?: Law, Morality, and the Environment is a collection of essays by Professor Stone, the title of which derives from his seminal 1972 article in the Southern California Law Review. Stone's 1972 article constitutes the first chapter of this book. Stone precedes that chapter with a brief introduction, which provides the back story for how his 1972 article came into being and found its way into Justice William O. Douglas's famous dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton. Subsequent chapters adapt essays and speeches that Stone authored between the 1970s and early 2000s, culminating in an epilogue, which assesses the ways in which the legal playing field has changed for environmental plaintiffs through 2009.
Chapter one (Stone's 1972 article) is a must-read for all those interested in environmental law, and this book's introduction and epilogue provide useful context for that article and its impact on legal development. That said, I found almost all of the rest of the essays to be a waste of time. That very well may not be Stone's fault. I am sure that many of the ideas offered throughout this book were original and influential in their time. But in 2023, many of the essays come across as somewhat redundant repackagings of his original Guardian-based proposal, lightly adapted to different situations (e.g., climate change, animals, future generations of humans, etc.). So please take my two-star rating in this context: I am in no way criticizing Stone's incredible portfolio of work — I simply think that readers' time will be better spent reading just his original 1972 article (plus this book's introduction and epilogue).
Chapter one (Stone's 1972 article) is a must-read for all those interested in environmental law, and this book's introduction and epilogue provide useful context for that article and its impact on legal development. That said, I found almost all of the rest of the essays to be a waste of time. That very well may not be Stone's fault. I am sure that many of the ideas offered throughout this book were original and influential in their time. But in 2023, many of the essays come across as somewhat redundant repackagings of his original Guardian-based proposal, lightly adapted to different situations (e.g., climate change, animals, future generations of humans, etc.). So please take my two-star rating in this context: I am in no way criticizing Stone's incredible portfolio of work — I simply think that readers' time will be better spent reading just his original 1972 article (plus this book's introduction and epilogue).
June 12, 2024
I'm by no means an expert in law, so I will not assume to judge this book from that perspective. Instead, as a layperson, I can say that this book is surprisingly comprehensible and accessible to a reader without prior knowledge! While some legalese is unavoidable for the topic, the book never left me confused or bored. Instead, it gave me an interesting overview over the possibilities and challenges of giving trees, the climate, animals etc. legal standing. Obviously it's not as easy as "just regard them as legal persons" and the author makes clear why it's a challenge, and gives suggestions for how it could be done.
What I would like to see is an update of the situation now. A lot of the examples quoted are from the 90s or earlier. Since then, environmentalism has definitely proved not dead, and the question of legal protection of nature and climate are all the more urgent today.
The book is very much written from a US American perspective, though quoting a few examples from other countries and making proposals for international law.
What I would like to see is an update of the situation now. A lot of the examples quoted are from the 90s or earlier. Since then, environmentalism has definitely proved not dead, and the question of legal protection of nature and climate are all the more urgent today.
The book is very much written from a US American perspective, though quoting a few examples from other countries and making proposals for international law.
August 5, 2025
Excellent book and every person who cares about our Earth, our environment should read this. Even more important in these draconian times.
Old but essential!!!!! What is old is new again - over and over - you'll see. After 60 years on the planet that is one thing I can tell you. The fight for what is fair and good and right goes ever on.
In my top lifetime 50 books. It expressed - when I read it back in the 80s - everything I didn't know how to say and all the worries I had about where this old world was going.
Same then as now.
Old but essential!!!!! What is old is new again - over and over - you'll see. After 60 years on the planet that is one thing I can tell you. The fight for what is fair and good and right goes ever on.
In my top lifetime 50 books. It expressed - when I read it back in the 80s - everything I didn't know how to say and all the worries I had about where this old world was going.
Same then as now.
September 5, 2023
An interesting legal environmental book that addresses the place of article lll. Discussing guardian roles for nature and animals. Which has standing as we have nonpersons like corporations and ships . In the chapters involving future generations rights. It was a new perspective to think of the value in terms of technology and economic development.
September 16, 2017
A classic and immensely important book for me. Provided legal arguments for environmental lawsuits- people did not have to be harmed, suits could be filed on behalf of environment itself.
April 24, 2022
Read about 1/3 for school. March-April 2022.
February 3, 2023
Remarkable
Read
October 30, 2025put it down after a little more than halfway, it got a bit dry but good
September 14, 2023
I actually really loved this book and lowkey makes me want to be a lawyer 🌲🌴🌳🏝️
September 18, 2012
A must-read for anyone interested in environmental law and policy, sustainability, animal or earth rights or just generally in ethics, law and environment. A thought provoking and interesting read, with some welcome updates from the earlier 1970s article.
December 30, 2015
This was hard to read with all the footnotes and trying to remember how to look up the legal citations, but a GOODread nevertheless. I still wish Garrett Hardin would have pushed to make people nicer rather than encourage selfishness, even it is sometimes seems like the common human theme.
August 9, 2010
I want to go back and finish this book. It's somewhat dense but not too long and offers great examples.
August 21, 2012
A seminal essay on bestowing rights to non-human living beings.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews